Inquiry Learning. Disciplinary Thinking. Civic Action.﻿

​Many observers of contemporary American politics believe we have reached the pinnacle of demagoguery and political posturing. True enough, negative campaigning, vitriolic personal attacks, divisive rhetoric, and other forms of incivility, are commonplace today. This conclusion, however, is drawn from a presentist view of the world, rather than from clear historical thinking. Historically speaking, incivility has been a rule rather than an exception in American politics. It is, however, a rule that surely needs to be (and indeed can be) broken.

The use of demagoguery—an appeal to people that plays on their emotions and prejudices rather than on their rational side—is as old as politics itself, dating back to Ancient Greece. The American founders understood this propensity. Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist 71, notes, “The republican principle… does not require an unqualified complaisance…to every transient impulse that people may receive from the arts of men who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests.” In Federalist 55, James Madison argues, “In all very numerous assemblies … passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason.”

In one of first contested presidential elections in 1800, the campaigns of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams engaged in an acerbic war of words. Among other things, Jefferson supporters called Adams a "hideous hermaphroditical character." In turn, Adams supporters branded Jefferson “the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father,” “an atheist," and “a coward.” The legendary Lincoln-Douglas Senate debates of 1858 were equally vicious, sardonic, and crude. Douglas repeatedly referred to Lincoln’s "Black Republican" party and made frequent use of the N-word. No doubt, hundreds of similar examples could be culled from the archives of twentieth century elections as well.

To point out this history is not to suggest that we should lose hope in a better America. To the contrary, knowing this history is the first step in overcoming it. What we need is not a return to some mythical golden age of politics and statesmanship, but to move beyond the vices of our fathers and our own base instincts. In short, we need a new era of reasoned civil discourse grounded in logic, humility, and empathy.

The key to the future, therefore, lies in humanities education. As Sam Wineburg argues, “My claim in a nutshell is that history holds the potential, only partly realized, of humanizing us in ways offered by few other areas in the school curriculum. … Each generation must ask itself anew why studying the past is important, and remind itself why history can bring us together rather than—as we have seen most recently—tear us apart.”

First, history teaches us how to think. History and civics education must go beyond a curriculum mired in trivia and facts. The answers to the questions we pose should not be Googleable. We must engage students in the compelling, philosophical, and persistent questions that shape humanity. As students pursue answers to these questions, they learn to gather evidence, make inferences, contextualize sources, distinguish facts from value judgments, and identify fallacious reasoning.

Second, when we encounter a multiplicity of voices and human experiences, we are humbled by the vast sea of events, information and ideas, and how little we know. Doing history teaches us to avoid hard-and-fast conclusions, but rather to hold suppositions as tentative. The past is gone; only remnants remain. Sometimes new remnants come to light or new ways of looking at old remnants are encouraged, forcing us to rethink our interpretations.

Third, history teaches empathy. Empathy is walking in another person’s shoes, the experience of understanding another person's condition from their perspective. As Jason Endocott and Sarah Brooks write, “historical empathy is the process of students’ cognitive and affective engagement with historical figures to better understand and contextualize their lived experiences, decisions, or actions.”

The methods we use to teach history are important to cultivating these dispositions. The Structured Academic Controversy (SAC) is a good starting point. This strategy blends the best of evidence-based argumentation with civil discourse. As described on the Teaching American History Clearinghouse website:

The SAC method provides an alternative to the “debate mindset” by shifting the goal from winning classroom discussions to understanding alternative positions and formulating historical syntheses. ... Working in pairs and then coming together in four-person teams, students explore a question by reading about and then presenting contrasting positions. Afterwards, they engage in discussion to reach consensus.

The Center for Civic Education’s We the People program is another model program for engaging students in civil discourse. Teams of students prepare oral arguments for a simulated Congressional hearing before a panel of judges, and respond to follow-up questions from the judges. Unlike many recent presidential debates, questions in We the People are deep, philosophical, and provocative. Here is a sample from this year’s national competition:

Americans “offered the world a new way of organizing government when they ‘invented’ federalism.” How would you explain federalism and what was new and different about it? Why has conflict over federalism been a recurrent feature of American history? Evaluate the claim that federalism allows states to experiment with new programs that other states can adopt or modify.

For fostering both historical thinking and historical empathy, Reacting to the Past, an increasingly popular approach used in university history courses, has created a standard for K-12 to follow. The methodology consists of course-long simulations, set in historical context. Students are drawn into the past with assigned roles informed by classic texts. Class discussions and presentations are run by students, with guidance and evaluation from the instructor.

​Indeed, American politics is, and has been historically, an ugly sphere. But the future can be brighter when the light of history, through the lens of logic, humility and empathy, shines upon it.

Recent developments have raised questions about what kind of civic education we should have in the United States. Critics of the College Board's new AP US History Framework claimed the framework emphasized negative aspects of American History, and short-changed ideals like American exceptionalism. Others have decried the poor results on the NAEP Civics Test as a clear sign of civic illiteracy. On the other side, many educators viewed the events of Ferguson and the Black Lives Matter movement as opportunities to promote civic activism.

Should American History and civics classes emphasize civic activism or civic literacy? Most curricula and classrooms will include some of both, and the two emphases are not mutually exclusive. However, the model below helps us understand these two approaches, and evaluate which way the pendulum may be swinging at the national, state, local, and classroom level.

​Consider the headlines below. What approach to civic education is emphasized?

Over the past several weeks, I have been crafting new assessment items around skills standards--credibility of sources, bias, stereotypes, claims, supporting evidence, etc. It strikes me that in the Internet and social media era, we need to update our thinking skills to address Internet legends, viral videos, and social media memes.

How do we wade through the multitude of spurious quotes, stories, and claims?​

Fact Check - Snopes.com or Factcheck.org are two good places to start. Of course, one should also fact check the fact checkers.

Corroborate - Compare multiple sources of information. Check the credentials of the writers. Who funds the site? What agenda is served by the claims? Who benefits from this "evidence"?

Contextualize - Based on social media memes, I would get the impression that the founding fathers lived in a vacuum, writing one liners and pithy quotes. They didn't. They wrote letters, speeches, and government documents. They addressed specific audiences for a defined purpose in a historical context. Read quotes in the original document. Use the immediate context to understand the connotation of words and phrases. Draw from the larger historical picture to find out what circumstances prompted the source. Historical thinking is hard work. The answers aren't always googleable. It requires us to immerse ourselves in a time and place much different than our own.

Avoid Eisegesis and Proof-texting - Clear thinking requires us to shed our presuppositions and allow the authors of texts to speak on their own terms. If we go to sources seeking to affirm our political positions, we will inevitability do so. It's a function of cognitive psychology known as confirmation bias, a tendency to interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.​

Appreciate nuance and shades of gray - Sweeping generalizations are easy to make. Digging deeper, we can see exceptions to general rules and significant differences between seemingly similar situations.

Why Study Philosophy? ​What course would you add to enrich the high school experience for the 21st century? Engineering? Computer Science? Coding? How about philosophy? Yes, philosophy. Learners in the 21st century need the sound reasoning and thinking skills offered by this classical discipline. Even if not offered as a separate course, the study of philosophy woven throughout and across disciplines offers great potential for deepening high school education.

The term philosophy means "love of wisdom." As a discipline in the humanities, philosophy offers similar benefits to the traditional subjects of English and history--to deepen and broaden our understanding of the human experience, and in turn, to make us better humans and better citizens. Indeed, many of the essential questions we use to frame English and history courses are philosophical in nature. These questions require us to draw logical deductions, solve ethical dilemmas, and make aesthetic judgments.

Philosophy introduces us to the various worldviews that shape human actions across the world. Political philosophy helps us understand the intellectual underpinnings of governments and ideology. These understandings allow us to better engage in meaningful civic dialogue and take informed action.

Of course, these are just the philosophical reasons for studying philosophy. Most of us will need practical justifications. (How does this help our students on the test?) Here we can turn to the sub-field of logic. In all disciplines, students are expected to evaluate and construct sound arguments using claims, evidence, and reasoning (warrants). Understanding how to construct logical syllogisms, and avoid logical fallacies, is particularly important in the use of reasoning. Reasoning uses rules of logic to show why the facts and data presented count as evidence. Consider the sampling of standards below drawn from the core academic disciplines to illustrate the importance of logic.

English Language Arts (Common Core State Standards)

Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.

Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.

Evaluate a speaker's point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric.

History (National Center for History in the Schools)

Distinguish between unsupported expressions of opinion and informed hypotheses grounded in historical evidence.

Interrogate historical data by uncovering the social, political, and economic context in which it was created; testing the data source for its credibility, authority, authenticity, internal consistency and completeness; and detecting and evaluating bias, distortion, and propaganda by omission, suppression, or invention of facts.

Support interpretations with historical evidence in order to construct closely reasoned arguments rather than facile opinions.

Scientific inquiry is characterized by a common set of values that include: logical thinking, precision, open-mindedness, objectivity, skepticism, replicability of results, and honest and ethical reporting of findings.

Science arguments are strengthened by multiple lines of evidence supporting a single explanation.

Scientific argumentation is a mode of logical discourse used to clarify the strength of relationships between ideas and evidence that may result in revision of an explanation.

Resources for Getting Started with Philosophy

Crash Course Philosophy - The popular Crash Course YouTube series is now developing an introductory philosophy course.

Logic in Argumentative Writing - This site from the Purdue Online Writing Lab unpacks the vocabulary of logic, and includes a full list, explanation, and examples of logical fallacies.​

The Cartoon Introduction to Philosophy- Michael Patton and Kevin Cannon take us down the winding of river of philosophy with graphic novel chapters on logic, perception, minds, free will, God, and ethics.

Wi-Phi - Wi-Phi uses entertaining and engaging videos to teach a range of topics in philosophy including metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of religion, and epistemology.​

Justice with Michael Sandel - In 12 video episodes, Sandel relates the big questions of political philosophy to current issues and ethical questions we confront in our everyday lives.

World History: Traditions and New Directions - Even if you don't teach world history, it's worth getting a used copy of this 1991 textbook on Amazon for the step-by-step directions on how to: recognize relevant information, distinguish facts from value judgements, recognize stereotypes, identify evidence, determine credibility of sources, detect bias, identify unstated assumptions, recognize point of view, and determine the strength of an argument.

Skills: What should students be able to do? Apply disciplinary thinking skills to text sets to show the relationship among social studies content, current events, and civic engagement.

The use of text sets supports infusion of the Common Core Literacy in History/Social Studies standards, and holds great potential for creating a 21st century social studies classroom. A text set is a collection of readings organized around a common theme or line of inquiry. The anchor text is the focus of a close reading. Supporting texts are connected meaningfully to the anchor text and to each other to deepen student understanding of the anchor text.

In social studies, close reading of content texts is not an end in itself, but rather a means to creating successful citizens. In this model, anchor texts can be pulled from rich collections of primary and secondary sources. Supporting texts from current events show the enduring relevance of the themes and questions raised in these readings from history, geography, and government and economics. Applying the tools of disciplinary thinking and common core literacy standards across the text sets prepares students to engage in meaningful civic discourse and take informed action.

Here is one example of an inquiry-based text set unit:

Course Overarching Essential Question

Should high school American history classes be patriotic?

​Unit Compelling Question

Should high school students be taught American exceptionalism?

​Supporting Questions

How did American exceptionalism shape American identity in the late 19th century?

What is the enduring impact of the doctrine of American exceptionalism?

Inquiry learning is central to history education. But, what does it mean to do historical inquiry? What types of questions can students investigate? The infographic below highlights five types of historical inquiries. Stay tuned for examples of each type in a folllow-up post.

Nineteen years ago, I wrote my high school senior research paper on the conservatism of the American Revolution. I used primary sources to argue, quite cogently for an 18-year-old, that the "American Revolution was a conservative movement aimed at restoring traditional British rights to the American colonists." Apparently, I was relying heavily on Daniel Boorstin and had not read much of Gordon Wood or Bernard Bailyn in high school.

So, was the American Revolution radical or conservative?

The American Revolutionaries' fight for liberty began as a conservative argument for rights as British subjects. However, the more radical nature of the American Revolution is evident when we look beneath the surface at the new argument Americans used to defend their rights: the higher-law principles of consent of the governed and natural rights. This radicalism, however, was tempered by the failure of the American founders to extend political rights to all those who naturally deserved them.

For the British, sovereignty resided with the "King in Parliament." The British government was a hybrid system with medieval elements of a hereditary monarchy and House of Lords. But, it also included a House of Commons, and system of rotten burroughs in which representation was not proportional to population. Although radical Whigs in Britain began to assert the doctrine of consent, most Whigs and Tories had to agree not to address any such principles of higher law because it would require their entire system to be reworked. They agreed to ignore the problem of consent and pretend the Glorious Revolution was just a moment of inconvenience.

As Americans agitated for their rights, the British continued to defend their system only on the grounds of customs and traditions of British law. In the "Summary of the View of Rights of British Americans," Thomas Jefferson tried to force the British to deal with the higher-order issue of consent. He blamed the King for failing to act as a negative against Parliament. Jefferson argued that colonial legislatures had equal authority with Parliament and it was the responsibility of the King to use his negative to protect the American colonies. But, of course, there was no such tradition that would allow these kinds of checks. It was only on the basis of higher-law principles of consent that the King could act in such a manner, and the British would not concede a higher law.

Edmund Burke recognized the problems inherent in British taxation of the American colonies. He argued that the British government should stop taxing the Americans because it would continue to raise questions about higher-law principles and point out contradictions in the British system. Nonetheless, the British continued to assert the right, through the Declaratory Act, to do as they wished because Parliament was supreme.

The Declaration of Independence was the Americans' magnum opus on higher-law rights. The Declaration listed grievances against the King for violations of the rights of colonists, but only after asserting a radical idea for the origins of rights: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

While the ideals of the Declaration and American Revolution were radical, the political realities were far from matching the rhetoric. Although some states outlawed slavery during and immediately after the American Revolution, the Constitution left in place a system of slavery that denied the most basic natural rights to enslaved African Americans. Frederick Douglass pointed out these contradictions in his 1852 speech, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?": "Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! ...The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. ...This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. ..."

Abolitionists of the 19th century (along with later women's rights and civil rights leaders) understood that the higher-law principles of the Declaration were the true foundation of freedom and equality. Setting out the aims of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, William Garrison called liberty both an inalienable right and a God-given right. To deny another liberty, he reasoned, infringed upon both the “law of nature” and constituted a “presumptuous transgression of all the holy commandments.” He concluded the same manifesto by affirming the movement’s two foundational documents: The Declaration of Independence and the Bible. Garrison was critical of the Constitution for its concessions to slavery, especially the Three-Fifths compromise. He regarded this as a betrayal of both republicanism and Christianity.

The Declaration of Independence asserted the high and radical aims of the American Revolution: the Enlightenment principles of consent of the governed and natural rights. But forces of conservatism kept many from enjoying those rights until later generations of radicals led movements for political change.

Rather than recommending a specific bibliography of works worth reading, I find it easier to recommend historians and history educators whose works I have found useful. This is especially true in recent years, as "works" are often in the form of websites, lesson plans, MOOCs, blogs, and tweets, not just traditional books and articles.

I have been compiling names over the last three years, and I am now finally getting around to sharing it publicly, in no particular order. While the majority teach social studies education at the university level, others are university history professors, high school teachers, or education consultants. I should also add a disclaimer that the inclusion of a particular individual in this list does not mean I agree with or endorse every opinion they express. My list is by no means exhaustive or conclusive, and I am always open to suggestions. Who do you follow?

Click on the names below for academic homepages or personal websites or follow the Twitter handles indicated.

Peter Pappas, University of Portland, teaches Social Studies Methods to pre-service teachers. His website showcases DBQs and other works that his students publish through iTunes. Twitter handle: @edteck

Dan McDowell, Grossmont Union HSD, is a former history teacher turned EdTech guru. His websites offer classroom resources for World and U.S. History, as well strategies (and examples) for incorporating educational technology in the social studies classroom. Twitter handle: @danmcdowell

John Fea, Messiah College, is a historian who specializes in the history of Christianity in America. Fea fights through the culture wars to present a balanced look at the role of Christianity in America, especially in the American founding. Twitter handle: @John Fea1

I recently came across my old filmstrip collection, which I believe has now officially passed from audio-visual aid to historic artifact. Most of the filmstrips are accompanied by a cassette tape that beeps as a signal to move to the next slide. Others require human narration. For the record, I am not old enough to have actually taught using filmstrips. I am, however, old enough to have watched them as a student.

As I looked through my collection, a question came to mind: has pedagogy changed in thirty years, or are PowerPoint presentations just the new filmstrips? While filmstrips could provide a helpful visual supplement to a lecture, they were largely a passive experience for students. Students might be required to take notes or answer some questions, but the content was largely pre-determined unless the teacher ad-libbed.

It is important to remember that PowerPoint is only software with a blank canvas (and some fancy themes). It is neither inherently good nor bad--it all depends on how it is used. A PowerPoint presentation need not be a canned lecture or scripted narration. When used effectively with interactive features, PowerPoint has far greater potential than a prefab film strip. Here are four suggestions for creating interactive PowerPoint presentations.

Vocabulary GamesVocabulary instruction is a critical component of students' academic success, and 55 percent of students' academic vocabulary comes from social studies disciplines. In Robert Marzano's Six-Step Process for Building Academic Vocabulary, step 6 requires involving students in games that enable them to play with terms. Games for vocabulary development should include student-to-student interaction. Tech savvy educators have created PowerPoint game templates that can be customized to meet specific course vocabulary. These include games like Password, Pyramid, and Taboo. For more PowerPoint game templates, see the links from FMI Teaching Resources and UNCW EdGames. Teachers can also create their own templates, using hyperlinks within the presentation. (See the directions in the Contingency and Decision-Making section below.)

Visual Discovery and Spiral QuestionsTeachers' Curriculum Institute, publisher of the popular History Alive! materials, uses visual discovery to increase engagement. Students view and interpret a few powerful images on a historical topic. As slides are presented, teachers pose a series of spiral questions on three levels. Students can assume the role of detective as they answer the questions and record notes in a graphic organizer.

In Level 1 questions, student detectives gather evidence by identifying the people, places and things. (What do you see in the image?) In Level 2, student detectives begin to interpret the evidence and make inferences about time period, place, or people in the scene. Students should begin to defend their answers with “because” statements. Questions focus on what, when, where, and who. In Level 3, student detectives must use the evidence and their own critical thinking skills to make hypotheses about what is happening and why. Questions at this level emphasize why and how questions and require justifying, synthesizing, predicting, and evaluating.

Checking for Understanding - Clickers and Poll EverywhereStudent response systems (clickers) provide an easy and quick way for teachers to check for understanding. TurningPoint is an add-in to PowerPoint. Teachers can create new presentations in TurningPoint or use existing PowerPoint presentations and add in new slides. These new slides include multiple choice items in which students can respond to questions with remote response cards. Results are tallied and displayed in a chart in real-time within the PowerPoint presentation. Teachers can save the session to track individual and group progress over time. (Note: Plickers is a free alternative that allows teachers to collect real-time data through a web browser and teacher smart phone or tablet, without the need for student devices. )

Poll Everywhere is an app that allows teachers to ask multiple choice or open-ended questions. Teachers create questions using the online app. Once the poll is activated, it can be downloaded as a PowerPoint slide and inserted to another presentation. Students can respond to questions via the web, text message or Twitter. As the students respond, results appear instantly on the slide. Graphs change and move and open ended answers roll in for everyone to see. Poll Everywhere now includes a PollEv Presenter Add-in option for PowerPoint. Teachers can download the add-in to create new polls directly in PowerPoint, and navigate between poll slides. In addition to checking for understanding, Poll Everywhere questions work well as brainstorming warm-up questions, such as a K-W-L activity.

Choose Your Own Adventure - Contingency and Decision-MakingPowerPoint presentations, like textbooks, often present history as a linear narrative of what happened in the past, without much consideration to contingency and decision-making. In their article, What Does it Mean to Think Historically?, Thomas Andrews and Flannery Burke write, "To argue that history is contingent is to claim that every historical outcome depends upon a number of prior conditions; that each of these prior conditions depends, in turn, upon still other conditions; and so on. . . Contingency demands that students think deeply about past, present, and future. It offers a powerful corrective to teleology, the fallacy that events pursue a straight-arrow course to a pre-determined outcome, since people in the past had no way of anticipating our present world. Contingency also reminds us that individuals shape the course of human events. . ."

PowerPoint presentations do not have to flow in sequential order. Instead, slides can be hyperlinked in a such a way that students choose from a set of decision-points and view possible consequences of their choices, allowing students to better understand the underlying and immediate causes of historical events. The Smart Art graphics in PowerPoint provide a variety of options to generate list, process, hierarchy, or relationship graphic organizers. To hyperlink an element of the organizer, click on the element and select Hyperlink from the Insert tab. Next, click on Place in This Document and link to another slide.

Above all, simply avoid death by PowerPoint by using the tool to promote interactive and engaging strategies, instead of rote lectures.

Echoes and Reflections, a leader in Holocaust education, provided a free, full-day workshop for teachers (English and Social Studies) in our district this week. Our presenter was Alexis Storch, Director of Education at the Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was joined by powerful testimony from John Koenigsberg, a Holocaust survivor. Here are some of the key takeaways for me.

The Humanity of All

Go beyond statistics to show the humanity of the 6,000,000-11,000,000 victims. How would the families of victims want them to be remembered? As bodies in piles or living humans? The destruction of human life cannot be adequately illustrated by numbers or objects (paper clips).

Nazis were not monsters, but human beings who committed monstrous acts. Dehumanizing the perpetrators allows us to distance ourselves from the actions that result from human prejudices.

Show photographs of perpetrators, onlookers, and victims with their families. Can you tell the difference among them from the photographs?

Agency and Choice

“Bystander" is a misnomer. Bystanders didn’t do “nothing.” They made a choice to be onlookers.

The Holocaust didn’t result from the actions of a single man (Hitler), but perpetrators and onlookers who made choices to participate.

Rescuers made choices to protect targeted people. In addition to hiding them, doctors and nurses protected potential victims by feigning illness and surgeries.

﻿Propaganda and Prejudice﻿

Prejudice is learned behavior. Some of the early efforts to boycott Jewish business failed because many Germans saw no reason to turn against their Jewish neighbors.

Propaganda and education (indoctrination), not just force, are necessary to maintain totalitarian regimes.

Propaganda takes different forms. Some Germans were turned off by the dehumanizing images in posters. Hitler’s writings and speeches were another form of propaganda that appealed more to some Germans.

Victims were targets for different reasons. While there was a long history of antisemitism in Europe, Nazi hatred of Jews wasn’t the same as religious antisemitism. Jews were defined by their bloodline. Both the “Semitic” and “Aryan” labels were social constructions. Jehovah’s Witnesses were targeted because they refused to swear an oath of loyalty. Homosexual victims were often those perceived as gay, not necessarily those who identified as such.

Telling the Stories

Survivors had different experiences. Some survived the camps; others were hidden by rescuers until liberation. Experiences varied by age, gender, etc.

Strive for complexity, not simple answers.

If you use historical fiction, such as the Boy in the Striped Pajamas (not recommended), be sure to do so with a critical eye and point out the differences between the story and reality.